Transfusions Are At Hub Of Lawsuit

December 01, 1985|by DICK COWEN, The Morning Call

Darrell Doron, a member of Jehovah's Witnesses whose blood transfusions during brain surgery last year continue to be the subject of court proceedings, is back home with his parents in the Monroe County village of Gilbert after long-term rehabilitation at Good Shepherd Home in Allentown.

His parents, Wilbur and Carol Doron, have set up a workshop for him, where he's building furniture.

His mother says Doron, 24, who came home a few weeks ago, has no physical handicaps, though he does have an indentation in his skull from severe head injuries from a traffic accident on July 30, 1984.

Doron can reason, she says. But he has trouble with short-term memory.

"He's active in church again," she says. "He hasn't lost any of that."

In a Morning Call interview this September, Darrell Doron said, "I figure if it wasn't for God, I wouldn't be alive. If not for his help, I wouldn't be here."

But there is some legal and medical thinking that blood transfusions twice in August 1984 during brain surgery operations at Lehigh Valley Hospital Center had a good bit to do with Doron's survival.

They were administered after emergency hearings over the phone between hospital officials and Lehigh County Judge James Knoll Gardner while Doron was on the operating table in a coma.

Such transfusions are contrary to the teachings of the Watch Tower Society, the organizational structure of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

"For Jehovah's Witnesses, the preservation of life for its own sake is not the supreme goal or concern," writes attorney William R. Bell in an appeal of the hospital's actions before the Pennsylvania Superior Court.

Bell asks the appellate court to overturn Gardner's rulings that permitted the transfusions. He seeks a finding from Superior Court that Gardner violated Doron's rights of privacy, self-determination and religious freedom.

Further, he calls upon Superior Court to find Gardner in error in holding emergency hearings without Darrell's parents present and in failing to name the parents as temporary guardians.

Gardner named a hospital administrator as guardian to oversee the possible need for blood transfusions.

Briefs have been submitted. Oral arguments have been heard.

Bell attacks what he labels the "prejudices and paternalism . . . the bias and procrustean insensitivity" of the hospital people. He says they saw only one end - to impose their own preferences upon Doron.

He contends Doron carried a signed medical alert card supplied by the denomination that said he refuses blood transfusions under any circumstances, even if they're necessary to preserve his life and even if he's brought in unconscious.

The hospital counters that perhaps there was such a card with Doron when he was first taken to a hospital in Warren County, but it was not among his belongings when he was transferred unconscious to LVHC.

Even if it was, the hospital argues, LVHC would not get into the business of guessing how that patient - if conscious - might decide in a life- threatening situation. LVHC would choose life-saving measures.

The LVHC brief was prepared by Allentown attorney Oldrich Foucek III.

The Hospital Association of Pennsylvania, which has filed a brief in support of LVHC, notes:

"Here, Darrell simply signed a pre-printed formula statement, perhaps distributed one day at a church service, together with his family, friends and community.

"Perhaps foremost in his mind that day was expressing solidarity with his religious community, and the realization that he could be figuratively signing his own death warrant may not have occurred to him.

"Certainly, for an Orphans Court to construe the spare content of this card as conclusive evidence of a 24-year-old man's willingness to end his life, without a chance to explore his views directly, would also be sheer speculation with the most dire of consequences.

Further, Doron's parents had placed upon the neurosurgeon a virtual demand for mistreatment. The father had signed consent for the surgery both times, but had said he and his wife were opposed to blood transfusions for Doron and would not authorize them.

"LVHC could either proceed ill-equipped to conduct the surgery, or it could refrain from performing the surgery," the LVHC brief says.

"In either case, the patient was likely to die or suffer irreversible consequences."

Neurosurgeon Mark Lester had told Gardner he would try to do the surgery without a blood transfusion. But he added that if severe bleeding occurred, a transfusion would be necessary to save Doron's life.

Foucek's appeal also cited other factors:

- He argues that the case is moot, that Gardner's clearance was just for those two emergency situations that are over and done with. He says Superior Court has nothing to decide.

If the Dorons wished to challenge what Gardner did, the place to do it was in county court in August 1984 by filing timely exceptions to his rulings.